


The Things That Make You Blink

by lizzledpink



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-30
Updated: 2011-05-30
Packaged: 2017-10-19 22:23:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/205857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizzledpink/pseuds/lizzledpink
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You kind of both suck at this, don't you? But in a good way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Things That Make You Blink

**Author's Note:**

> This was written as my way of working out the reason I literally couldn't bear to read any Dave/Jade fanfiction. Turned out, I didn't like how the couple was written, and for most fics, still don't - but at least I can see it now.

We all have our little fuck-ups, you think, but she’s the one you genuinely worry about.

She’s the one born on the island, raised by the wind, the clouds, the dreams, and sometimes the internet. She’s quirkier than a shop of tawdry quirks. You can’t help but think that if not for internet-streamed television, which she sometimes watched (but usually found pointless because there was _fun to be had_  and gardens to grow and good dogs to play with), she would be just… lost. Stranded even more in society than she usually is.

So thank hell that you and John and Rose found her, right? 

Because you remember your first thought, when you first started talking: the three of you were lonely, but Jade was _lonely_ , and it kind of killed you to talk to her.

But in a way that only made you want to talk to her more.

Oddly enough.

And now, you see her in person, and you still want to talk to her, and still like to. But it’s more difficult, outside. You’ve never liked talking too much unless it was laying down a rhyme or two.

Behind your shades, behind your quiet, cool facade, you do a lot of watching, more than people would think.

Lots more.

You’re the one who first notices Jade’s sleeping habits. She’s narcoleptic, you already knew that because she’s just generally batshit crazy. But then there are times when she just _doesn’t sleep._  She’ll go for days without resting. There will be bags under her eyes, and she won’t even notice them until the day she finally collapses right into one of the rosebushes outside John’s house.

Nobody taught her to sleep at night and play at day. So she just keeps going, until she stops, and her body forces her to stop.

It’s one of many things you notice. And now that you all live near each other, well… You don’t think you could teach her. Not really. 

But you could protect her.

You slip into her shadow quietly. You watch. And she notices the watching.

“Dave, don’t be an ass! Come and talk to me!” she yells, grinning. You can literally see the “:D” smiley face affixed to the end of her words, and it almost makes you want to smile back.

But instead, you shuffle out, shrugging.

“What are you doing?”

“Following you.”

“What for?”

“I’m your knight in shining sunglasses, here to protect you, princess,” you say, drowning the syllables in liquid sarcasm. Not long enough to suffocate, just enough to make it painful to breathe.

Jade remains oblivious; you kind of like that - the fact that your irony doesn't even work on her. Not a bit. “I don’t need protecting! If anybody tries to hurt me, I’ll shoot them in the face!”

Yes, she does. “Yeah, but they don’t know that, do they?”

Jade scowls at you. “Dave, if you wanted to hang out with me, all you had to do was ask.”

You shrug.

She takes this as a cue to start nattering on about something to do with gravity and a fervent wish for an alchemiter so she could make her scientific experiements with ease. You roll your eyes; she can’t see, but that’s okay.

Suddenly it’s autumn, and leaves are falling. 

Suddenly you’re both a little older, a little more time drifting behind, and you’re heading off to high school for the first time. This scares the shit out of you. It’s Bro’s fault. Bro and his horror stories about dames who don’t know when to quit, and stupid-beefy guys who are too thick to read books, and other fucked up things.

Stupid fear.

Rose is calm; she wears her black lipstick and a deceptively innocent outfit and looks appropriately terrifying. You aren’t worried in the least about her. 

John is and always has been John. He’s never afraid, and somehow the lucky bastard gets through everything anyway. Not to mention, there’s the fact that it’s impossible to hate him. Sometimes you think you’re jealous of him, of godtier, of the way he gets everything he wants, seemingly. Then you remember he’s _John_  and you just can’t be jealous, at all. The kid’s that great. And he’s your best friend.

Jade’s the one you worry about. She doesn’t get social, and unlike the other two, she can be hurt. She’s so out there (she will stand on a street corner, staring at the cars passing, for long minutes, just because she can) that you _know_  she’s going to find herself in trouble with the other kids. Different is never good. 

She’s got tough skin. And she’ll kick boys who tease her in the face if she gets pissed off. And she’ll also call anybody insulting her a “fuckass” without hesitation. But you still worry, because even if she can fight back, that doesn’t mean it won’t hurt her.

Sometimes you regret it, saying you were her Knight, that first time. It’s come too damn true. When you step up to the doors and push them open that first day, it’s with her. She stands at your side, adorable buck-toothed smile at the ready.

(You’re the Knight, and she’s a Witch. Damned if you haven’t been charmed. But you don’t know it yet.)

“All set, Harley?”

“Relax, Strider.”

“Do I look tense to you?”

“Yes,” she says, laughing. “It’s okay, Dave. I’m here to defend you!”

“No, I’m not-“

She pushes the doors open, and you have no choice but to follow her down the fucking rabbit hole.

At least you’re not late.

Jade runs off and, as usual, you follow after.

And another day she will run ahead of you, and still you’ll follow after, but nobody’s around to see and she’s not going to turn around. (She doesn’t need to turn around to know you’ll be there.) So, you’re smiling.

Strange sensation, but hey, it works.

She reaches her favourite tree in the park, its limbs coated in snow. She doesn’t care about the fact that she’s in a skirt. Her arms wrap around the first branch and whoops, she’s up in the tree, smiling down at you.

“Get up here already!”

The things you do for this girl.

You only need one hand on the limb to swing up there, because you’re that cool. 

She starts talking about synthesizing the crystalline structure of snow using a specialised fractal and you tell her that if anybody could do it, she could. And she probably will.

Sometimes the world feels like a lot of people all at once. Sometimes the moments are slow and you can hear them tick by in your head, forever trudging only forward, never back, never sidestepping or splitting off - just moving ahead.

Other times she’s about to fall asleep in the middle of a rant about the complete dicks in her gym class, because she _still_  sometimes does this, so you inch a bit closer when she isn’t paying attention, and when her head starts to droop, you nudge her head closer and let it fall on your shoulder instead. And you let her rest a bit, except when you pick her up and bring her to her bed instead.

You care about her a lot, but you don’t think about love, really.

Then, one day, you do, and it’s all _fucking Lalonde’s fault._

Because she and John are going out. As in, boyfriend and girlfriend.

Oh.

Whoop-de-fucking-do, you tell her. Nice to know that some day your sister has a chance at actually getting laid.

(You sort of deserved that punch.)

Because you just didn’t think about it. You are a Strider. You’re supposed to pick up the girls for a night, give them a good time, tell them you love them and then let them out the door, still giggling but never to come back.

You haven’t really cared. Maybe because you’ve been too busy noticing her.

Noticing that Jade kind of wants to get her hair cut short. It’s way too long for the hot weather that’s coming in just a few months, now. She’s running around, chasing after her friend Brittany, whose name rhymes with dittany, and her hair is so damn long that it makes it hard to turn! It flips around everywhere! Agh! She doesn’t say any of it, because she has learned tact and she has also learned that You Do Not Swear Around Adults, but she wants some of it gone.

You tell her you’ve been thinking of getting your hair cut (not entirely false) and she decides she’s going with you.

Jade cuts her hair to a little above shoulder length. Suddenly it’s very light and curls a bit to frame her lovely face.

Jade really does have a lovely face. Kinda. In a derpy sort of way.

You notice that she still can’t fucking stand history class. 

It is a class about people who are dead. It is a class about people who were stupid and mean and got in wars all the time, Jade says, not quite yelling. She hits her head against a pillow in frustration.

Maybe it’s because of your timey-wimey shit, but you don’t see it that way. You like history; the details cement in your head. Some are taken from the text, telling you the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776. Others aren’t from the text. You should not be able to know that nobody gave a shit about John Hancock’s bloody signature, except for Ben fucking Franklin, who laughed.

Franklin was a bit of a jerk. 

You sigh and pick up her homework, starting to help her through it. Sometimes, you read it to her like a story, plucking the details like the colour of Paul Revere’s shirt (red, ironically) from thin air. And they’re probably true.

And she listens to you, her chin in her hands, smiling as the words come to life.

Those nights, you speak more than any time in your life. Except, of course, rapping.

Suddenly it’s a hot summer night and Bro says the two of you are heading to Florida for a week’s trip. Nice sun, good beaches, all that.

Okay.

“Don’t be so fucking dejected. You’re losing it. You can take one of your derpy friends, okay? Even the freaky science girl.”

When she says she’d love to come with you, 

Except you didn’t think this ahead. Fuck. _She is wearing a swimsuit._  Also, she never learned how to swim. You point out that she lived on an island and that this is the stupidest thing you have ever heard of because she lived on a goddamn island.

She points out the supernatural magic dog-guardian-thing that protected her and kept her away from the water.

Right.

You’re always amazed how little it bothers her that her life makes no sense.

But anyway, she’s running down the beach, and then she’s picking along it, looking for shells, and you’re sitting under the umbrella, just watching, as always. And when she goes into the water, it’s not too much of an imposition to take your shirt off and join her, just in case. 

She likes holding her breath and ducking beneath the waves. Then, a moment later, she pops out again, just like a frog.

(Jade almost fails biology class because she refuses to do the frog dissection, both in reality and on the silly computer simulation thing. You can’t really blame her for that, but the school can. Fuck the school.)

“Ribbit!”

And if Bro sees you _laughing_ when she splashes back into the water, only to come up again, well, he never mentions it.

You notice she likes Florida, and is sad to go back, but as always, she smiles and moves ahead anyway.

You notice, that summer, that sometimes she will run into your room without warning and grab your hand and suddenly whisk you towards adventure, except adventure is usually just something weird like exploring an abandoned house and pretending there aren’t any ghosts there.

You notice that Jade doesn’t really get love.

Rose and John are inseparable, these days. They’re rarely without each other, and when they’re with each other, they can’t keep their hands off each other. But Jade doesn’t seem to get it. 

You think?

It’s because she sort of stares at them, confused. Maybe she just never really saw love any other way. She just had what few fictional videos she saw, and the books she read, and maybe a few fairy tales. It’s not really enough, and it’s not what love is in reality. It doesn’t show the slow, steady progression of a relationship - the meeting, the infatuation. The slow grasping of hands, followed by the sweet and hesitant and often _bloody ridiculous_  first kiss. 

Jade doesn’t seem to grasp these particulars. Love is a curiosity, even more so than the rest of the world. Sometimes you look at her and think, hell, she’s already in love with goddamn everything. The sky, the sea, the people, _there is nothing_  that she doesn’t love about this fucking world. So how could she possibly have room in that ginormous heart of hers to love one person, more than anything else?

You’ve finally figured out why that thought so saddens you.

She’s just too beautiful. 

Suddenly, it’s autumn again, and it’s the first school dance of the year. You hate school dances. The music is shit. You could mix up something so much better than this in your sleep. And the other students, they’re just thick and immature. Maybe you can blame some of your maturity on Sburb, but still. It’s ridiculous and pointless and okay, fine, you’ll go. Jade does look spectacular in the green dress. Must have been Rose’s handiwork - a remnant of her friendship with a certain fashion-conscious troll, you think.

You’d wear Four Aces Suited if you still had it. You don’t. Shame.

She threads her fingers through yours and decides she’s going to kiss you. Jade leans forward and presses her lips firmly against yours, and you’re sure that if anybody could see your eyes, they would be really, really wide.

“Did I do it wrong?” she asks, worried.

Your mouth drops open just a bit. So, she grins and kisses your cheek.

“Come on, Dave! Have some fun for once!”

Doesn’t she know, she always makes things fun? 

Doesn’t she get it? You’ve been a time traveler, and you still see the world with a weird wibbly slant. You see everything that’s happened and everything that will happen, and you find it so, so easy to get lost in the past and the future, so easy to forget the present when there’s so much ahead to be afraid of, and too much behind to remember, too much behind you to ever dare take a step back.

It’s through her eyes that you see it all anew. Because yeah, these gardens have been loved before, and cared for, but not like they have by Jade. She finds the wonder in the universe and brings it out; she’s like a weird living embodiment of all the energy, all the life, everything that exists - all the things you can’t completely see any more. You get lost - but she’s the Witch of goddamn Space. She’s never lost. She knows exactly where she is. 

She finds you again. It’s really hard to feel alone, like you always have, when there’s somebody who can always look for you and find you, every time.

Jade has run off into the crowd. You shut your jaw, slip off the bench, and finally see what she’s been seeing - 

The meeting, the infatuations. Holding hands, being inseparable wherever you go, and, of course, the bloody ridiculous kiss. Awkward and insane and oh, okay, so maybe this is a thing.

A really good thing. A really good sort-of-in-love thing.

You shouldn’t be okay with that, but you are. It’s not very cool, but you don’t really care.

Following her into the crowd, you think - and it’s a crazy thought - that maybe, while you’ve been noticing her, noticing every single thing about her, she’s been noticing you back.

Scary thought, but a good scary. You think she knows that; maybe she knows you’re afraid a lot. Maybe she knows there’s a pair of eyes behind your shades and they don’t always know what they’re seeing, hiding behind there, afraid to come out and be themselves.

Okay.

Suddenly it’s winter. Suddenly, it’s Christmas Day. Your second Christmas Day as part of the Harley-Lalonde-Egbert-Strider madness.

It’s just past midnight when she wakes you up. She tells you to grab your coat.

“You’re out of your fucking mind.”

“I didn’t realise I had one.”

“That explains so, so much.”

“Just put it on already!”

She takes your hand, and the warmth is enough to make you smile, as always. But she doesn’t even stop; she heads up the stairs and out to the roof. It’s snowing. White Christmas. 

Jade lies down on the roof, sticking her tongue in the air to catch the snowflakes.

Hesitantly, you lie down beside her. It’s really cold. Whatever.

You think back and remember that someday she’s going to build a machine that will actually create really, really, real snow, each crystal unique as the last. Because she might be mad, but she’s a genius. Of course.

“Not like that,” she says.

She takes your shades off. You stare into her eyes. You think she’s going to kiss you, or maybe you’re going to kiss her, but it doesn’t happen.

Jade just smiles.

She lies back down, and tucks her hand in yours, and nestles against your side, and it’s warmer now.

The snow falls down and will probably bury you both in enough time. But Jade falls asleep (of course) and you can probably spare a few minutes just to let her rest.

Your eyes see the light of the moon reflect off the snow without any barrier at all. You feel her hand. You would say you could smell the smile on Jade’s face, but you’re not Terezi, so you can only imagine it in brilliant, noticed detail. Close enough.

It’s a quiet moment, neither of you talking at all, and it’s rather perfect.

You wonder what she’d say if you said you wanted to marry her. She’s probably say yes, you think, like it was no big deal. Then she’d kiss you and then she’d just start talking about the Christmas Cactus she’s finally helped to bloom, and everything would go on.

Not that you’d really get married. You’re only fifteen. You have all the time in the world to spend with her. Plenty of years to think over what is clearly the most irrational and best idea you’ve ever had.

No hurry.

None at all.


End file.
